Background and interests

I use genetic analyses to address questions on the evolution of humans and other primates, particularly the great apes. I began my career working on the evolution of mitochondrial DNA in human populations. At the MPI-EVA, I have had the opportunity to work collaboratively with field researchers studying primate social behavior.

Topics we work on in my lab may focus on the level of individual social groups, such as examining the affects of kinship on the social behavior of pairs of individuals. Other studies use genotyping of entire primate populations to infer dispersal behavior and group social dynamics.

Recently I have become interested in using large-scale sequencing approaches for understanding the long-term histories of primate populations and seeing the effects of high variance in male reproductive success on patterns of genomic variation.